


Colors

by FireflyFish



Series: Prompted: A Collection of Might-Have-Beens in a Galaxy Far Far Away [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Jedi Padmé Amidala, M/M, Sith Qui-Gon Jinn - Freeform, Tumblr Prompt, Vaderkin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 04:52:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9863708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflyFish/pseuds/FireflyFish
Summary: Obi-Wan Kenobi's world is black and white until he meets the enigmatic Sith Lord, Qui-Gon Jinn.





	

Obi-Wan Kenobi’s world is black and white.

There is good and there is evil.

He is a Jedi and therefore he is good.

Raised as the last Padawan Learner to the venerable Grand Master of the Order, Obi-Wan has strived all his life to be the perfect Jedi, the epitome of the light. He has ruthlessly chased out fear and anger from his heart, has excised all that would tempt him down a darker path shaded in charcoal, ebony, and onyx. He knows the shades of ivory that mark the path of the truly righteous like the back of his hand.

He is an example to the Order, to those initiates who feel they will never be chosen, encouragement to those Knights who fear that perfection is out of their grasp, and a subtle reminder to masters to think twice about their preconceived notions.

If Obi-Wan Kenobi can become a paragon of light, the finest of his generation, Master Yoda’s true heir, then anything is possible.

Through the light all things are possible.

Except… that is all Obi-Wan can see.

There is no color in his world, no vibrant blues, no ruddy crimson or a delicate yellow. The world around him is as black and white as the lessons handed down to him from a grandmaster who has evolved beyond caring about the color of a flower or the particular shade of the sunset.

After 800 years of shades of grey, Yoda needs no gaudy, saturated rainbow to tell him that sunlight dappled through the leaves of a sweet oak in the Room of a Thousand Fountains is beautiful. He simply accepts the world that he sees as it is. He does not need color nor does he want it.

“A Jedi craves not these things, Obi-Wan,” Yoda tells him and Obi-Wan does his best to listen to his master’s wisdom, to tell himself that there is beauty in the shift from radiant white to ecru to charcoal and the inky wash of night time.

It works for the most part. 

There are stories on the holonet, simple minded vapid tales of nonsense about soulmates and the gift of colors and Obi-Wan would pay them no mind if his friends didn’t find them so hilarious. Luminara giggles at the florid language, while Quinlan cackles and makes bad jokes about rutting.

Even Padme, a younger Padawan Obi-Wan mentored in his final years as a Senior Padawan, enjoys watching them, her eyes lighting up as the soulmates, now united, take their first view of the world around them. They are exported to another plane and the show inevitably ends on a long and lingering kiss.

Obi-Wan thinks that’s all a bunch of nonsense and would tell his friends so if he didn’t know it would hurt their feelings.

“There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel loved,” Quinlan explains to Obi-Wan one night on a mission assigned to the two of them. “I know that old troll has your brains scrambled so that all you can do is eat, sleep and breathe the Code but I think he’s wrong. We all want to feel loved, to feel like we’re a part of something bigger than ourselves.”

“What is bigger than the Order?” Obi-Wan asks gazing up at the distant stars, sparkling bits of light in the depth of a black void. “What is bigger than the Force?”

Quinlan shrugs. “I don’t know. Love? Maybe that’s all the Force is. Love. And when you meet the right person it can help you experience the Force in a whole new way.”

“I do not need a romantic partner to be complete, Quinlan,” Obi-Wan sniffs and Quinlan lets the subject drop and when Quinlan’s world explodes in color six months later, he does not mention it to Obi-Wan. But he does mourn the fact that his friend will never know that his eyes are blue, with hints of grey, that his hair has strands of copper mixed with honeyed wheat.

Time passes and the light becomes harder to find and Obi-Wan tries to shine brighter, to be better, to hold up a candle against the encroaching darkness. There is more now than ever before. Ink washes of ash and soot where there should only be pure, pristine white. The fog of war rises with rumors of darksiders, of actual Sith, drifting through the gauzy, hazy peace of the Jedi Temple.

Obi-Wan has never met them but his world is black and white, good and evil.

They are Sith and so they are evil.

The first hints are missions that go awry, ones where knights don’t come back, or come back grievously injured, their blood staining dove-grey robes black. There are reports of beings dressed in black with gleaming, horrible stars for eyes. Two of them, they say, a master and an apprentice.

The galaxy teeters on the edge of something, struggling to stay upright, to stay in the light, to resist the pull of the dark.

And then something snaps: an assassination attempt, an illegal seizure of territory, a starship blown up in “neutral” territory. It doesn’t matter what the exact act is.

It never does.

War sweeps through the galaxy and the Jedi are called to defend civilization, to defend democracy and to defend the light, and Obi-Wan Kenobi is on the front line.

His men tell him their color is yellow, like a life-giving sun. The other brigades and legions are a rainbow of colors that are lost on him.

What do the colors matter if those brave souls all end up the same, dead on the battlefield?

It doesn’t matter that fire is red-gold and white hot or that Padme’s 501st is painted blue like the Naboo sky at high noon.

What does any of it matter when there are Sith out there and the darkness is growing stronger?

And then one day, Padme finds Obi-Wan meditating in his room, and she is crying.

“I saw him! I saw him on the field!” she sobs into Obi-Wan, into the safe haven of her brother Jedi’s arms. “I saw him and… and… his eyes… I couldn’t look away.”

Obi-Wan nods, quiet, caring and listening. He has heard the Sith have arresting eyes, that it is like looking into the heart of a dying star. He has heard they are conventionally attractive but he has yet to meet either Master or Apprentice.

“Which one? The older or the younger?” he asks, his voice soft in the pale grey of the early morning light. Padme hurried to him as soon as her ship docked back in the orbital shipyards.

She manages to stammer out that she saw the younger, that he was tall and wild and that he looked straight at her.

“And… Obi-Wan, I… I… Oh I don’t know how to say it!” Padme curses, tears spilling anew. “His eyes! I saw them! And they… they… they were gold.”

For a moment, Obi-Wan is struck dumb, his mouth works but his mind reels, trying to make sense of this, trying to fit this very dark shade of grey into his black-and-white world.

Padme is good. Padme is a Jedi.

Padme is made of pure light.

She would never have a Sith for a soulmate.

And yet, she does.

“His hair is brown and their robes are black, like soot or scoring, and his blade is red and I know what red is and I don’t know what to do!” Padme sobs and Obi-Wan holds her in place, promises her it will all be alright and that they will find a way through this. He is her elder brother, her friend and confidant. He won’t tell a soul.

Who would believe him?

But as worried as he is for Padme, there is a part of him that is jealous, that silently burns with spite. She now knows that her eyes are brown, her lips are pink and her robe is the soft fawn of spring trees. Padme knows that there is another out there, one whose existence gives her life meaning and fills up an empty hole within her.

She finds out later that his name is Vader, well, Anakin and he loves her, has become obsessed with her. Padme loves him too, is just as obsessed, and they chase each other across the galaxy, fighting to win, to capture and to tame the other.

But the hole in Obi-Wan stays empty and his world stays black and white.

“Proud of you, am I,” Yoda confesses to Obi-Wan, late one night. “Difficult this war is, but shine like a beacon you do. The best of us, you have become, my Padawan.”

“Thank you, Master,” Obi-Wan replies but the words feel like ash in his mouth.

The world grows darker with each engagement, with battles lost and won. Padme vows that next time she will catch Vader and bring him to justice and Vader gives him messages for Padme that next time he won’t let her go.

Obi-Wan wonders if the two are incapable of working a comm but he dutifully delivers the messages.

He tells himself he is not jealous, that he is not lonely.

He is a Jedi and he is good.

He is wreathed in light.

Then comes Geonosis and battle to destroy the droid-making abilities of the Geonosians. Obi-Wan leads his 212th attack battalion from the ground, supported by the 501st and others. They make their way through seemingly endless waves of droids to come upon the target, a tall, organic spire carved from sandstone by the insect creatures. It is a hive and a bunker.

And they will hit it with everything they’ve got.

Obi-Wan leads a company in with him, Luminara leads the artillery bombardment from behind and Padme and her squads try to out-fly Vader in the sky. It is a dangerous battle, pitched between the light and the dark.

Obi-Wan can feel the galaxy hold its breath.

And then he sees him, the Master, the tall imposing figure he has somehow not seen until this day.

At first Obi-Wan thinks there’s something wrong with his eyes because the man cutting through Master Mundi’s troops is not dark so much as his aura is tinged with red. Obi-Wan shakes his head and scrubs at his eyes, assuming that his mind is playing tricks on him, that he cannot possibly be seeing red.

He doesn’t know what red is.

But the Sith moves with surprising speed and grace through the battle, mowing down clones and droids alike as they get in his path. His skin is flushed and his hair is warmer than grey but not black, what Obi-Wan suddenly realizes is brown.

And his eyes.

His eyes are gold rimmed in red.

Obi-Wan’s mind whirls as the world around him explodes in color, as blue practically assaults his senses from above and the sudden onslaught of yellow demands to be noticed, to be seen. The sandstone hive-bunker is a rusty, ruddy umber and the blade of his saber is azure.

And the Sith’s eyes are golden and his hair is brown with streaks of grey and he is looking straight at Obi-Wan.

There are only a few meters between them and in the chaos of battle, no one stops the Sith who storms over to Obi-Wan, his predator eyes narrowed and the line of his jaw hard in spite of the beard that fails to soften it.

“And who are you, Jedi?” the taller man asks, looking over Obi-Wan’s face as if looking for a key to unlock the mystery that has just been presented to him. “I’ve not seen you before.”

And to his credit, Obi-Wan attacks because he is a Jedi and he is good.

But his soulmate is a Sith.

One day Obi-Wan will learn his true name, whisper it in a moment of abandon and passion when he cannot fight it any longer, when their colors are too much, too much gold and blue, the red of soft lips and warmth of an indigo-edged night.

His name is Qui-Gon Jinn, and now Obi-Wan Kenobi’s world is full of color.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by Hellsbellssinclub's tumblr prompt over at [my tumblr FireflyFish.](http://fireflyfish.tumblr.com/post/156061278697/send-me-a-ship-and-a-number-and-ill-write-a-short) She requested #1 which was a Soulmate AU and this is what I came up with. I have never written Quibi before so this was definitely an exercise for my writing muscles! And somehow some Anidala snuck in there so this is a real first for me! ^_^ 
> 
> I hope y'all enjoy it!


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